Spooky Art & The Midnight Disease

Excellent books for any writer, I've read both. Avail on amazon, ha!

Spooky Art, Norman Mailer
Midnight Disease



And GonzoThe Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson releases in theatres this week.

Mick Lasalle's review was quite favorable:
"The film is thorough and entertaining. It's enthusiastic about his contributions, but it's no hagiography, and it serves as both a celebration and a cautionary tale."
Lasalle gives a breakdown about why kids should not try to do drugs and alcohol to help them write, ala Thompson style.
"You want to write? Avoid drugs and alcohol: Sure, drugs and alcohol fueled a few incandescent years for Thompson, but once it's admitted that Thompson was good because he was a good writer and not because he was a substance abuser, the ways in which his habits cut short his creative period become clear.

Beyond the obvious, that drugs and alcohol sucked his vitality and damaged his health, those substances also pickled him in a set of ideas and attitudes that he'd developed as a young man. What comes through between the lines of "Gonzo" is that Thompson didn't grow as a thinker or as a writer. His preoccupation with the "death of the American dream," which was at the heart of his important work, became the reflexive prism through which he interpreted everything.

It's ironic that the man who foretold the end of 1960s idealism should have been so frozen in the attitudes of that period. Was it drugs? Was it fame? Was it the drug of fame mixing with the other drugs and alcohol?"